SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA -- Hart InterCivic became the second voting machine vendor to agree to comply with any requirement to publicly disclose technical information about how their voting machines work should that become a requirement of state or federal law. At today's San Mateo County Board of Supervisors meeting, where the contract was approved, Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Warren Slocum stated that the contract was worded to make it clear that Hart InterCivic would comply with any future voting system requirements that become law including, "open source."

Announcement: Open Voting Consortium CEO Alan Dechert will be on CNN with Lou Dobbs this evening at 6PM EASTERN, 3 PM Pacific. He will discuss the recent security problems uncovered by OVC and other organizations in the past few months.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- “This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

Opposition to our open voting bill AB 2097 (Goldberg) was predicated on vendor non-compliance. They said our law would cost the state huge sums because vendors would refuse to go along.

We have proven this to be false. At the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting last week (Jun 8), the registrar of voters, Dave MacDonald described the contract with Sequoia. He said that the agreement includes a provision that says the vendor will comply with any state or federal law that requires open source. You can listen here. Here is page 12 from the contract (see last part of section E).

California State Senator Debra Bowen won the Democratic Party endorsement for the office of Secretary of State at the convention last weekend. In the debate with Senator Deborah Ortiz, her opponent in the primary, she condemns Diebold and says, emphatically, "we need open source voting software that is publicly owned and not proprietary...." Click here to listen to that part.

Or, you can listen to the whole debate. Willie Brown is the moderator. Senator Bowen received over eighty percent of the delegates' votes!

I've said it a few times in public. There's "no opposition" to the OVC project. The challenge is in gathering together the support needed to accomplish steps toward our ultimate goal.

So when Jackie Goldberg's office (of the CA Assembly Member that's carrying our bill, AB 2097) informed me that lobbyists were showing up saying that industry is making it a priority to kill our bill, I had to re-think that just a bit.

I'll be on Keepin’ it Real with Will & Willie tomorrow morning at 7:30a. That's Will Durst, the comedian/satirist and Willie Brown, former San Francisco Mayor and former California legislator. It's 960 AM on the dial or you can listen via Internet. http://www.quakeradio.com
I'll be talking about the upcoming San Francisco Elections Commission forum this Wednesday evening.
http://www.sfgov.org/site/electionscommission_page.asp?id=38123
Also, I'll talk about how industry folks like Diebold are trying to kill the bill we are sponsoring, AB 2097 (D-Goldberg, Los Angeles). This bill would require full public disclosure of all technical details (including source code) for voting systems as part of the certification process.

The Washington Post has a great graphic that details the differences in regulation between Vegas slot machines and proprietary electronic voting machines.

The State of Nevada has access to all of the software that runs slot machines, and it's illegal for casinos to use software that's not on file. Meanwhile, Diebold, Sequoia and other vendors aren't required to disclose software code for their voting machines because it is a "trade secret."

In just the past seven days, more than 2500 people have emailed Secretary of State Bruce McPherson through my website, urging him to reverse his decision to re-certify Diebold voting machines.

The people of California deserve a full and transparent process for managing elections, a process that welcomes their participation and input -- not backroom deals and secret studies that only see the light of day after final decisions have already been made.

Apparently, email messages from 2500 concerned citizens aren't enough to make Secretary McPherson change his mind -- so we need to make sure he hears from thousands more people, like you. That's why I'm asking you, urgently, to forward an email to the Secretary of State as well.

Friends, we have received a $10,000 challenge grant from OVC supporter Chris Franklin. Here's what he had to say about it:

In thriving democracies, vote counting is observed by representatives from all of the parties involved. This process makes cheating and/or mistakes almost impossible. Use of closed, proprietary, software to count the vote eliminates any observation, making the vote totals inherently untrustworthy. Open voting systems, that can be examined by all parties involved, is the only way to retain this crucial oversight when votes are counted by machine. OVC is a central part of making sure this is done.

I am making this donation with the expectation that others will match my contribution. People who, like me, want to look their children in the eye and know that they have done everything in their power to hand down a great country with a democratically elected government. Only with a voting system that is completely open to voter oversight, can that be ensured. If we lose our democracy to secret vote counting, our children will not enjoy the freedoms that we have today.